Most Thai temples announce themselves in gold. Wat Ratchathammaram, on the south-eastern coast of Koh Samui, does the opposite: its halls are raised in a deep red stone, and it is by that colour that islanders and visitors know it. The interest of the site lies in its surfaces. Almost every exterior wall, gable and column is worked in relief, and the carving runs continuously around the building, populated with figures from the Buddhist tradition and with the guardians, serpents and celestial beings of Thai iconography. Seen from the road the effect is monolithic; up close it dissolves into thousands of individual decisions by the craftsmen who cut it. The compound sits within sight of the sea, and the film uses the passage of the sun across the reliefs to reveal detail that flattens out at midday. Alongside the architecture, the programme records the ordinary traffic of a working temple on a busy island: worshippers lighting incense, the rustle of offerings, the contrast between the quiet of the enclosure and the coast beyond.
